Soul's Pawn
by Naga
Summary: A year after the fall of the Float, life took a sudden turn for Yuri Hyuga when his power as a Harmonixer turn him into a target.
1. teaser

WARNING: Huh, never had to do this before, but... allusion of child abuse, substance abuse, strong language (pissed off Yuri), middle of the story snippet  
  
GENRE: PG-13 to R  
  
=================  
  
~ ~ start teaser ~ ~  
  
Yuri gave the manacles around his wrists a hard pull. The chair rests the manacles were attached to gave a metallic groan and bent just a little, but they held. He could break it - if he had a couple of hours and did not mind losing a little bit of skin, and if the guards would leave him alone.  
  
One damn if too many.  
  
Shit.  
  
"I gotta tell you, buddy, your hospitality sucks. How long exactly are you planning to keep me here?"  
  
The man who had named himself Joachim Tarrant looked on indulgently. He had not reacted visibly at Yuri's attempt although his guards and the scarred sorcerer Yuri had internally dubbed No-Nose had tensed.  
  
"Oh, this room? Not very long, I hope. Once our assignment is complete, we can depart from this," a condescending wave of hand encompassing the entire barren stone tower, "miserable, drafty old castle and move to a much better accommodation."  
  
"What assignment?" Yuri asked suspiciously.  
  
Joachim Tarrant pulled a wooden set close and sat in front of him, somehow managing to lounge on the hard chair. The man reminded Yuri of a cat, though certainly nothing as harmless as a household pet. Presently he smiled, a lazy, half-challenging, half baiting smile.  
  
"I am going to bring one of the Great Gods of ancient back to the land of the living."  
  
Whoa. Déjà vu.  
  
"You are out of your mind," Yuri stated flatly.  
  
"Hmm. I wonder, did you say the same thing to Master Dehuai?"  
  
"W... what?"  
  
The man rubbed his chin with one white gloved hand, a small quirk lifting one corner of his lips. His grey eyes were coolly amused. "The Oriental Adept you faced last year. Or perhaps, to the one who called himself 'Albert Simon'?"  
  
Yuri had a sinking feeling in his stomach. "How the hell... you know them?"  
  
The man waved his hand negligently. "By reputation. But I do keep track of what is happening in the occult world, and I must say that the three of you have wrecked quite a havoc last year."  
  
"Not like I have a choice," Yuri muttered.  
  
"Oh, I agree. Powerful sorcerers they may be, but they are fools."  
  
Yuri lifted once skeptical eyebrow. "Uh, really? Didn't think you'd see it my way. After all, I don't see any difference between you and them."  
  
The man smiled indulgently. "Can't you? They would summon a god and let it wreak destruction on the world at will. What use is a tool that you have no control over? Only fools and madmen would do such a thing. I am neither."  
  
"Yeah, well, whatever," Yuri grumbled. "You wanna summon a god, I think your brain's already screwed up. But what do I care. You try it your way, and we'll be there to kick your butt when you fail. You and your pet monster both."  
  
That smile again, the one that said I-know-something-you-don't-ignorant- boy. The one that made him fantasize about how good it would feel to smash the heel of his boot right on that smile.  
  
"Ah yes, your friends are welcomed to try. You, on the other hand, will be quite... indisposed."  
  
"If you think that you can hold me for long, think again, old man," Yuri growled. "I'm not going to let you touch her. I'll find a way to kill you first."  
  
To his dismay, the man did not seem at all impressed by the threat. If anything, his smile seemed to grow bigger. He took a step closer, would have been within Yuri's kicking distance if his legs were still free. Yuri was still considering whether spitting would have been too immature when the man bent closer and spoke softly.  
  
"It would seem that there is a misunderstanding here, Mister Hyuga. I can see how you could have drawn the wrong conclusion. It is true that I am... intrigued... by the abilities of 'Demon Eyes', but contrary to your belief, I do not require it for my invocation." He inclined his head towards where No- Nose was watching them intently. "You see, I have more than enough powerful sorcerers and Sources to draw from, to execute the invocation without a Demon Eye. While it would be a pleasant bonus, it is not the essential element." He looked into Yuri's confused dark eyes, not more than a meter away now. "My essential element... is you, Yuri Hyuga."  
  
The chair gave a soft moan as Yuri's muscles relaxed in astonishment. "What... me?! What are you talking about?"  
  
The man was definitely smirking now, damn it! But his next words took away Yuri's growing anger like a blow to the stomach.  
  
"You see... I don't need a catalyst. I need a container. I need a physical receptacle in the material world to bind and confine the Ancient Ones that I am about to summon. It may be a near impossibility to control a free summoning out of a containment circle, but a properly prepared human body is capable of acting as a substitute for the circle. It is much easier to control, and it can be easily moved to anywhere you want." He lifted his hand to caress Yuri's jaw. Yuri jerked back in reflex even as his mind reeled from the implications of the man's words. But fingers tightened and caught his chin, holding him like metal claws.  
  
"A Harmonixer, a thing that possesses no barrier of its own against foreign souls, one that absorbs and turn those souls into part of itself. And a Fusionist capable of giving birth to a physical manifestation of those soul energies... You have no idea how long I have waited to obtain something like you, one who is perhaps the last of your kind." The man's grey eyes were gleaming with a fervor that was sickly familiar to Yuri. He had seen it in DeHuai's eyes, in Albert Simon's eyes.  
  
"I will summon the Great One into this physical realm, and you, my young Harmonixer, will consume It into your soul. And we will be Master of the Greater Gods through you."  
  
Yuri felt physically sick. This lunatic actually wanted him to... to fuse with this Greater God? Something that made the Lord of Outer Reach and the Seraphic Radiance looked like minor leagues in comparison? His mind skittered away from the remembrance of how it had felt, melding his mind and soul with the terrible, impossibly alien immensity of the Seraphic Radiance. It had shattered his sanity and nearly swallowed his soul. He had absolutely no doubt that this would have been worse, much worse.  
  
"You know," he croaked, "you might as well kill me. Faster that way, and save you a whole lot of mumbo jumbo. I'm kinda flattered you think I can handle it, but... you're outta your fucking mind!!"  
  
He was released with a small chuckle Tarrant moved away. The imprints of his fingers burned on Yuri's skin. "Oh, I have no doubt that you can't. Handle it, I mean. And even should you, by some far-fetched miracle, able to control the Great One, you would have been of no use to us. Again, a weapon that can think for itself is a flawed weapon."  
  
"Then what the fuck do you want?" Yuri snarled, ignoring the small, gibbering voice at the back of his mind that sounded too suspiciously like a certain terrified nine-year-old.  
  
Tarrant smiled indulgently. "Just... be, Yuri Hyuga. Be the receptacle of God, and let us handle the rest." He nodded towards No-Nose, who in turn popped open the medicine bag he carried and retrieved a prepared syringe. The two guards from the door dropped their impersonation of stone gargoyles and stepped in to held him down with rock-solid hands. They ignored his curses and increasingly desperate struggles, holding his left arm steady as No-Nose expertly massaged his vein and jabbed the syringe needle into his inner arm. The small sting was nothing compared to the panic growing in his mind. When it was done and the two gargoyles had released him, Yuri snapped out, "What the hell was that shit?" He had a very nasty suspicion that he knew what it was, and was rather proud that no tremors marred his voice.  
  
"Just something to help you relax. Consider it a mercy gift, Yuri Hyuga. Soon, you will feel no fear nor anger. It is better for you this way."  
  
"You can stuff your gift where the sun don't... shine. I don't need any gift... from..." His breath hitched. There was something... wrong... with his sight. Yuri blinked and tried to focus on the man in front of him, but his eyes refused to follow the order from his brain. And why were the Brits leaning at an angle? Or did they...?  
  
"Fuck...," he whispered.  
  
A burst of adrenaline kicked the fog out of his mind and he renewed his struggles against the manacles binding him. Panic lent him strength as he recognized the muzziness spreading across his brain, weighing and slowing down his thoughts like a condemned prisoner's iron ball chained to his ankles.  
  
Once, when he was much younger and not quite as wise on the dangers of the streets, someone had lured him into a house richly lit with blood-red lanterns, with the promise of food and a warm place to sleep out of the snow. He had been given food and water as promised and he had eaten his fill for the first time in months. But the room had been filled with cloyingly sweet smoke and the food had sat leaden in his stomach. Despite that, he had felt curiously calm and... happy. Content in a way he had not felt since he had lost his mother the winter before.  
  
Later, much later, he knew that he should have gotten out when he could still think. But that night, the caution he had learnt surviving on the streets had seemed so distant, his mind rejecting the harsh bitterness of reality and embraced the numbing, comforting warmth enfolding him. He had snuggled down into the pillow given to him and fallen asleep. Confusion and pain had greeted him when he awoke, pain and another dose of his own brand of madness, the second release of his personal demon from hell and awakening once again to find himself the sole survivor in an abattoir. He had fled then, terrified literally out of his mind. His memories were still hazy on what had happened, a few pieces missing from the bits and pieces of jigsaw puzzle in his mind, but he remembered what had caused him to fall asleep, to lose control. And fifteen years after the fact, never once had he drank enough to lose himself, or indulged of the drugs offered him on the streets by furtive vendors. The cost for a dose of forgetfulness was too high.  
  
Until a power-hungry, lunatic aristocrat with delusion of world domination had fed him enough high-grade opiate to send him sailing as high as a kite.  
  
"You're making... a big... mistake...," he panted out, feeling his sight graying around the edges. He stopped his struggle for a while to draw breath, but that turned out to be a mistake. Instantly, the mind-numbing fog reversed like a wave and rolled over him, pulling him under. A small prick of pain from his palms gave him a short respite, dragging him gasping to the surface. His vision cleared a bit to show him his fingers digging into his palms, a hint of red seeping out.  
  
He heard Tarrant's voice, still so calm and cultured, oh-so-slightly amused. "Do relax, Mister Hyuga. You are fighting the inevitable. The drug will spare you all the unpleasant details that will follow. It will also stop you from making any foolish attempts to escape and spare us all the aggravation of subduing you. Enjoy it while you can, a lot of people is willing to pay good money for the experience."  
  
He wanted to continue fighting, he really did. But it was getting so hard, so heavy. And really, was it such a big deal? Being angry, being afraid, constantly fighting... he could just rest for a while, couldn't he? It was getting so nice and warm now, and the constant pain he had been enduring was going away, it had stopped hurting now, even where they had shot him in the chest. That was good, right? Not hurting? He realized he had been watching his fingers for some time, relaxed from the tight fists they had made, and even that small pain had disappeared. In fact, he could not quite feel those fingers now. He tried waggling them just to see if he could, and watched, fascinated, as his index and middle fingers wiggled jerkily. The middle finger was pointed almost straight out at the Master of the Initiates. He thought it made a perfectly good obscene gesture and sniggered at that.  
  
"Rolf?" He heard the Tarrant's voice, then his face was lifted up and tilted this way and that, and a bright pinpoint of light shone painfully into his left eyes. He cursed, or thought he did although he could not have said what it was he had cursed them with, and struggled away from the light. Bony fingers caught him again deftly, pushing his jaw up and forcing his head back, the light hurting his right eye this time.  
  
"Fuck off...," he mumbled, or thought he did, then snickered at the thought. Tried but couldn't quite figure out why that was funny, and gave up the effort.  
  
"I believe he's hearing angels sing now," a dry voice commented near him. He thought of telling the voice to shut up, but it seemed to be too much effort. Besides, it wasn't really that loud.  
  
"Good," a more distant voice said. "Give him another dose every four hours from now on. This will go much faster without him fighting us every step of the way."  
  
"What about his fusions, Sir?"  
  
Fusions? What... oh, fusions. He flexed his mind, stretching for a distant black hole in his mind, a move as instinctive as a walking...  
  
"Damn it...! Sir, watch out...!"  
  
...heat around his body, rattling of chains, sharp pain suddenly blooming in his chest where they had marked him...  
  
...and fell short of his goal. The blackness winked at him, out of reach. He panted at the pain and the effort, thought distantly that he should feel more upset, but it was too hard an effort so he just let it go. The sharp pain in his chest dissipated as quickly as it had come and he hummed softly, content to just drift.  
  
"There is no need to worry, Rolf. As you can see, the bindings work just as well now as it had been before. Better. He no longer has the mind to fight against it."  
  
Warm skin against his cheek, stroking gently like a father's hand. (Or a pet's owner... and where had that come from...?)  
  
"We will take good care of you, Yuri Hyuga. You will live for much longer, and in greater comfort than you would have on your own. True, I cannot promise that you will be sane enough to appreciate them, but sanity for a Harmonixer is, after all, a wasted quality. And it is a small thing to pay for the price of godhood."  
  
======================  
  
Notes:  
  
1. Joachim Tarrant: Description to be given later, but think of think of Stuart Townsend as Dorian Gray in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, ten years older. Charismatic, a bit oily, annoyingly superior attitude.  
  
2. Red lanterns signifies a brothel house in China.  
  
~ ~ end teaser ~ ~ 


	2. I 1

~ Interlude I ~  
  
Somewhere off the coast of Western Isles...  
  
The surface of the water was as still and reflective as a mirror, quiescent in the depth of the carved stone basin. But it did not reflect the guttering torch lights that partially lit the small room, nor did it reflect the shadowy visage of the man bent above it, hands splayed, cupping the basin's rough, pitted sides. Instead, the water was dark as unlit sea, smooth as midnight, broken only by a dim pulse of red from the center of the darkness, like the shade of burning stone viewed through a crack in the mantle of earth.  
  
"There it is, Sir," the man suddenly spoke, his whisky-rough voice betraying a hint of excitement. "As you have foreseen, the Relic is wakening. I can feel its burn even through my construct.  
  
"Of course," a deep baritone answered, a slight accent tingeing the cultured, upper crust British inflection. "Have I ever misled you in such matters of importance? Now, hush, here it comes..."  
  
The gentlest of footsteps, soft as whisper, came echoing as if from a deep, hollow well. Slowly they grew louder, until finally they sounded as if they came from right outside the room, though they were muted as if heard from behind a pane of glass.  
  
The two observers watched the scrying water intently, and were rewarded as a weak amber glow wavered into being from one corner of the view. It quickly resolved itself into the unmistakable form of a torch, its half- extinguished barely providing any illumination. But it was enough to bring to life shades of shadows that sketched a tantalizing picture of a cave, extending far back beyond the ability of the light to reveal.  
  
The man holding the torch, for it was possible to see his broad outline, was tall, but the finer details was lost. Soft rustling of cloth could be heard as the man walked towards the red glow like a moth drawn towards candle flame. He stopped abruptly, standing directly on top of the glow, and it would seem that he should have fallen straight on top of the glow, except that he did not. Instead, he stood almost as if suspended upon a crust of thick ice, the glow a short, teasing meter below him.  
  
The man knelt, one hand holding the torch closer while another rapped on the surface none too gently. The dim torchlight glistened across the smooth surface as if reflecting upon black basalt. Dull raps confirmed the solidity of the surface, the sound absorbed by the thickness of the intervening barrier.  
  
The man made a sound of frustration, quickly followed by a hard punch. Chips flew, testimony to the strength behind the blow, but the punch barely gouged the surface.  
  
The first observer shook his head wryly. "Does he seek to break the protective barrier with his fists? When not even the strongest explosive invented by man could make a head way?"  
  
"I would not underestimate what this one can do with his fist," the second observer said absently. A glitter from the corner of his eye alerted him, and he grinned suddenly, a rather wolfish grin. "But," he continued, "I do not think our friend will have a chance to find out. It would seem that he had attracted the attention of the Guardian."  
  
A sudden wash of red swept across the cave, revealing carved giant statues adorning the walls and ceiling of a huge room, far too angular to be natural cave. When the light dimmed, it was to reveal a new addition to the occupant of the room – a huge monstrosity whose six incandescent wings nearly filled the entire cave with their spans. The body was that of a lissome maiden robed in white, the white face with its closed eyes serenely beautiful, the long fall of golden hair completing the picture of a perfect feminine beauty. Which made the sickly greenish serpent tail that made up its lower body all the more grotesque, the six elongated arms with talons as long as human thigh bones sickening deformities.  
  
"The Guardian of the Temple," the first observer said not without a little bit of awe.  
  
The Guardian glowed with its own white light, brightening the room as if it was broad daylight. The brown-haired man standing in front of her had long since thrown away the now useless torch, both fists held up in front of him in classic defense stance. He should have looked ridiculous, a puny man barely a fifth the size of the Guardian. Yet there was something - perhaps in the way he held himself in front of the Guardian, the way he watched it unflinching with dark eyes. It took the first observer a while to tease it out.  
  
It was the total lack of fear.  
  
Even as he watched, the man dropped his fists, tilting his head up at the Guardian almost insolently. The light washed over his face, still an unlined face of a young man, strong cheekbones with just a hint of an Oriental bloodline in the upswept angle of his reddish-brown eyes.  
  
The young man glared at the Guardian, then he suddenly gave a quick, feral, toothy grin.  
  
And once again the room was flooded with a brilliant flash of light.  
  
~ Interlude II ~  
  
Switzerland, near the border with Germany...  
  
The old man, back bent from too many hard years and punishing arthritis, turned and pointed a finger towards the mist-shrouded forest higher up near the mouth of the valley. The lantern in his hands cast a weak glow over the small porch of his house, and the village lay sleeping beyond.  
  
He cast a curious look at the woman standing in his front lawn, who had interrupted his sleep when all sensible people would have been comfortably in their beds, deeply asleep. She looked to be in her late twenties, corn blue eyes and full lips set in an attractive face, sun gold hair pulled back in a high ponytail. Her heavy woolen long coat was dusty and stained with travel wear, heavy leather boots that may have been new and fashionable at one time, but were now as stained as the coat. Underneath, she wore thick woolen sweater in concession of the cold, and long men's pants that was just a tad too snug for the old man's comfort of mind. It was obvious that she had been on the road for a while, but for his life, he could not imagine what could have brought such a woman to a small village in the middle of nowhere, to knock on his door at close to the middle of the night. It was not the safest of time, these days, and the forest of late was a right downright dangerous place when the sun had come down.  
  
He was, therefore, thoroughly appalled as the woman turned on her boot heels and headed out, especially after the pointed questions she had just asked.  
  
"Wait, you should wait until morning. When morning comes, we can get the men to go with you. It's not safe there, there are beasts and worse..."  
  
The woman turned towards him, blue eyes glinting with amusement, and faster then his eyes could follow, a full bore twelve-gauge rifle appeared on her hands, the clack of loading stock sharp in the crisp night air. She must have hidden it under her coat, he thought dazedly.  
  
Her smile, though still as sweet as the one she bestowed when he opened the door, was just a tad too bright and eager for a woman who was about to enter a dangerous forest in the middle of the night, all on her own.  
  
"Don't worry, pops," her smoky contralto voice purred, "I'm quite capable of taking care of myself."  
  
~ Interlude III ~  
  
The crow burst out of the cave mouth, wings flapping wildly as it sought to gain as much distance and altitude from where it had came from. Even as it climbed away, other creatures came bursting out of the cave mouth. Bats, hundreds of them, their shrieking cacophony and erratic flight generating total chaos at the front of the cave. Fast behind them, bigger birds, their bulk unnaturally big, their flight ungainly because of it and because of other unnatural protrusions and distortions in their body, things that were not born of any natural evolutions. And below them, the land-bound came tramping, crawling, slithering out – creatures as small as a lizard, things that looked like wolves and lions and crocodiles but were not, and a few of them, huge beasts that roared and screeched and screamed as their twisted, malformed bodies crashed past their smaller brethrens, flattening and tearing in indiscriminate terror-driven reflexes, as they all fled their haven, forced out by something beyond even their ability to survive.  
  
As the crow soared on the night wind, high above where chaos boiled out of the cave mouth beside the hill mound, it could hear a rumbling from below, deep underneath the earth. A second later, a blast of crimson light punched out of the center of the mound, battering aside huge boulders weighing tons as if they were matchsticks, and tons of loose rock and dirt showered the area, raining down on the shrieking mass beneath, pulverizing and burying those who were unlucky enough to be in the way.  
  
The crow watched with beady black eyes as a black form came shooting out of the meters-wide hole in the ground, watched as it slowed down a hundred meter above and snapped open massive leather wings topped with wicked talons, stopping itself dead in the air and hovered in the air. Following the silent instruction in its head, the crow veered closer, giving itself and its Master a better view. The creature in front of it, a fusion – the crow's Master whispered, looked like something that Hell had spit out, unrelieved black in coloring, its fully three-meters length of humanoid form covered in what looked like natural plate armor. Everything, from its hideous crimson-eyed visage to half-meter talons and blade-like protrusion on its right hand spoke of lethal violence. Even as the crow circled it cautiously, the fusion's hands weaved in front of him, and recognition flooded the crow as its Master identified an arcane conjuration being drawn. It dove steeply to the side, madly putting distance between itself and the beast as a ball of darkness, something so dark and empty that it may as well be anti-light, grew between the creature's palms. It held it there, waiting, bolts of black light crackling from within it, hungry for release.  
  
The light was the first warning of the second creature's coming. It lit the hole in the ground from below, then the glowing form rose from within, lifting itself as effortlessly as a feather, its six wings holding still and in no way supporting its ability to fly. The being, the one that the crow's Master had called the Guardian, was singing, its full red lips opened, the wordless tune reverberating in the air like a Church hymn inside a Cathedral. Yet within its mouth, there was only the stump of a tongue, the raw bleeding appendage as still and useless as the wings. Its eyes remained closed, yet it turned itself unerringly towards its nemesis. The song picked up in strength.  
  
The fusion roared its defiance, and hurled the seething ball of destruction in its hands straight towards the Guardian. It sped towards the Guardian, but just a meter before it would have impacted, it abruptly burst open, black lightning splashing like water and briefly highlighting the curve of invisible shield that it had hit upon. The black creature snarled, lips drawing back to reveal serrated, razor-sharp teeth, and it hurled itself recklessly towards the Guardian. It did not slow down as it neared, rather using his speed to further power the blow of its right fist. The fist hit the shield, visibly slowed as the creature fought to push in, its powerful wings beating furiously, then with a triumphant roar something seemed to give and the fist hurtled in, a solid punch in the gut that drove the Guardian back. But before the fusion could follow through, the Guardian turned its face up and the song rose abruptly into a shrieking octave. The force of the blow, for the Guardian's voice was definitely its primary weapon, threw the fusion back, and before the disoriented creature could recover, the Guardian's six hands blur in movement. A choked cry as the fusion doubled in on itself. A claw had embedded itself into its left shoulder and another had ripped through the membrane of the left wing, another two had scored a direct hit on its torso, and two hands had fastened themselves around the right thigh. Even as the fusion twisted desperately to free itself, the wicked claws on the two hands sank in deep and a sickening crunch was heard as the force behind the claws broke through the tough armored skin and savaged both the flesh and the bone underneath. The fusion screamed in pain, but almost immediately, it drew back and punched the Guardian in the face. In a blink of an eye it seemed to turn into a whirlwind of violence, brutal fists and kicks, head butts, raking claws, anything and everything that could hurt its opponent. Overwhelmed, the Guardian drew back, grips loosening as it sought to escape its maddened captive.  
  
It was enough.  
  
With a snarl the fusion drew another ball of absolute dark in his right hand, a small one for it did not have the time for more, and shove it right against the Guardian's face. So close the two opponents were, that the Guardian's shield was of no use. It screeched in pain as the seething blackness burned its face, white flesh running like hot wax and golden hair crisped into ash. The song cut off abruptly as the Guardian reeled back, in more pain than it had perhaps known in its entire existence, its hands letting go of the fusion as they clutched at its ruinous injury.  
  
The fusion staggered and flapped its wings, awkwardly trying to regain its balance with one torn wing. It started to go after the Guardian, seemingly intent on finishing the fight, but the Guardian abruptly opened its eyes. Black pupil-less eyes stared back in a face contorted with fury, and it Screamed at the fusion with every hatred and pain in its being. The air rippled like summer heat wave and the force of the blow hit the fusion like a runaway train and hammered it down to the ground.  
  
The crow followed as the fusion fell in a wild corkscrew, wings twisted and limp. Just as it thought it would crash to the forest underneath, the wings suddenly stiffened, snapping out to their full lengths as the creature sought to slow down its uncontrolled descent.  
  
It was too little too late.  
  
The fusion crashed through the layers of branches and was lost to the crow's sight. But the sound as it collided with the ground could have been heard kilometers away. Following its Master's urgent commands, the crow wheeled in closer, noting the carnage the fusion had made on the forest – the broken boughs and limbs, entire trees shattered and uprooted. It glided through the hole left in the forest canopy, and finally saw the fusion, or what used to be the fusion monster, at the forest ground.  
  
There was a five-meter radius hole on the ground, as if particularly potent dynamite had exploded or a minor meteorite had crash-landed. The fusion monster was nowhere to be seen. Instead, in the middle of the hole, sprawled the brown-haired man last seen inside the cave. As the crow landed gently on a tree branch nearby, the man gave out a small groan, and scrabbled weakly to his elbows and knees. He stayed there for a few long minutes, swaying slightly. Another minute, and he dragged himself to the side of the hole, slowly pushing himself to his feet. A painful hiss and one foot buckled under him, nearly dumping him face first into the ground. His right leg lay limp under him, huge rips showing in the trouser leg, and his left hand hung uselessly. Soft, pain-filled curses drifted to the crow's hearing as the man half-pushed, half-crawled towards the nearest standing tree and leant against it, panting.  
  
The crow preened its tail feathers fastidiously, smoothing those ruffled by its rough travel. The two-legged was going nowhere fast. It would follow the man for as long as its Master bid it, or for as long as the man would survive alone in the forest in his condition. It cared not one way or the other. It just wished that dawn would come soon so it could feed.  
  
As the man took the first halting steps, the first sounds of the hunters of the night drifted in the forest wind.  
  
~end~ 


	3. I 2

I – pro. Dream a little dream of me

Today, I dream of her sitting under the gnarled, leafless oak tree, feet tucked neatly under, serenely leafing through the bible held on her lap. She is dressed in the blue overcoat over white blouse that she has worn the first time we meet. Her white blonde her seem to gleam with its own light, her porcelain-white face a pale beacon of radiance in the perpetual night of the Graveyard. A lone raven perches on top of a marble tombstone a stone throw's away, watching us with its single beady eye.

I walk through the still, heavy mist that hide the gravestones, smoky tendrils reluctantly swirl and part before me, damp fingers caressing my hair and face. The mist tastes of damp earth, crushed grass, wet moss on slick stone. A slight stir in the dead air brings with it a knife-sharp, ammoniac tang of rot, accompanied by the rich organic smell of torn open grave.

The Graveyard is in fine form today, taunting with the more vivid recreations of reality. Or perhaps, more accurately, recreations of memory, since all of these come from within the depth of my own twisted mind.

Another day, I would have been more appreciative. Today, I have eyes only for one thing.

I kneel in front of her, feeling strangely timid, afraid that she will disappear when I touch her, turning into another phantom in a graveyard full of them. So I don't.

"Alice."

Barely more than a whisper. But she hears me, looking up at me with a sweet smile that make my heart ache with bitter longing. She places the ribbon marker across the page she has been reading and closes her bible with care, every movement as graceful as I remember.

"Yuri," she says, placing her clasped fingers neatly over her bible, and gods… one word is enough to close my throat, strangling me with all the remembrance of her saying my name – in kindness, in anger, in laughter, in tears…

…in love.

God damn it, this is not fair.

Her warm palm against my cheek startles me badly enough to rock me where I kneel on the hard ground. Warmth. I turn and press my face against the soft skin, drinking in the living warmth like a man freezing to death. My hands have apparently bypass my brain's control entirely and I find myself clinging to her, grasping her wrist and trapping her hand against my face.

She wasn't warm the last time I held her, seven days and a life time away. I am afraid… so afraid that my twisted psyche will remember it in time and choose to correct the mistake. I think I will go stark crazy if it does. Or rather, crazier than I already am.

But this time, my subconscious seem to be in a lenient mood. Maybe it's tired of self-flagellation too. In any case, the hand stays solid, and it stays warm. I'm not complaining.

"Yuri," she breathed, "don't cry."

"… am not." Stubborn pride and old habit make me say it. Stupid, when I can feel the wetness on my cheek, too warm to be mist. But no one's ever accused me of being smart. Stupid old Yuri, too dumb to know a treasure dropped in his lap, too slow to figure out what was wrong, too late to do anything to stop the priceless gift from crumbling into dust in his hands.

Did I say self-flagellation is getting old? My conscious mind is perfectly capable of getting on with it without the help from my subconscious.

"Are you real?" My voice sounds like it should belong in a church, not in the middle of my own god damn dream. But I know why. Don't we petition the gods too, all the while wondering if they are real, being afraid that they're not, but hoping despite it anyway? Alice has been the guiding light in my life, more so than any so-called gods have ever been.

The raven lets out a single hoarse caw. I am pretty sure the damn bird was laughing at me.

She smiles. "I'm as real as you want me to be."

"What does that mean?" I sound grouchy even to myself, but I hate riddles.

Her laugh is like a breath of fresh air, as incongruous in the nightmarish setting as a ray of sunshine at midnight. "I should tell you to figure it out yourself, you lazy oaf. But what it means…," and here she pulls on me gently and keep pulling until I am lying down with my head on her lap, staring up at her face, "… is that I will be here for as long as you need me." She leans down and I feel a light, fleeting pressure on my forehead, like the flutter of butterfly wings.

"Until you are ready…" She whispers to me, the warm puff of her breath on my ear sending a shiver down my body.

"Ready for what?"

She smiles and it seems to me that there is sadness shadowing her face, but a flapping of heavy wings take the words away from her lips and I see the damn raven flying straight at us. I have time only to raise my hand before the raven fills my sight and the dream bursts apart in a flurry of black feathers.

I – 1.

_6 months later…_

Zurich, winter 1914.

There was something, Yuri thought grimly, distinctly unfair about having to suffer cracked ribs and mangled arm, just to drag yourself home on a broken leg in time for your own birthday.

But he had made the mistake of revealing his date of birth to their band of friends, on a truth or dare game liberally supplied with intoxicants Margerete had managed to filch from somewhere. It had been Alice who had asked, Alice who had gone red as a tropical sunset when Margerete had coyly suggested 'dares' that Yuri had wholeheartedly agreed with, Alice who had promptly gone for her book in a fit of Yuri-bashing when Yuri had attempted to… persuade… her of the merit of one of the more interesting 'dares'.

Yuri winced through a stab of pain, not all of it physical, as he forced his broken right leg to shuffle forward. He could see the gleam of his belt buckle, pulled taut around his thigh, and below it the glistening, jagged edges of broken femur. _Come on, feet move… lift, step, lean on hand, shift… lift…_ The uneven forest trail was not helping, and the occasional roots and undergrowth were a real hazard. He did not want to even think how a fall would feel right now, with his cracked ribs. As it was, he was leaning like a drunk against the pine tree on his right, his arm balancing and half supporting his weight as he struggled on with only one whole leg.

A sudden tug on his coat, snagged by one of the myriad hidden tangles, pulled him off balance and nearly sent him sprawling to the ground. He staggered and jarred his wounded leg on the ground, the sudden grinding pain nearly blacking him out. Yuri barely felt the roughness of the pine bark as he sagged against the tree. "Fuck…," he whispered, breathless from the pain, and feeling the beginning of true fear.

He was in a very vulnerable position right now. All it would take was one fiend infesting this forest sniffing his trail and tracking him down. With his luck, it would come in a pack, like all the weaker cowardly kinds tend to do. Or if he was _really_ unlucky, he would get to face off with one of the forest guardians, driven mad by all the killings and twisted beyond recognition. One good blow would probably kill him at this point.

His body was trying to heal itself, as evidenced by the painful sensation of bones grinding and coming together and flesh re-knitting itself, but it was doing so slowly. Far too slowly.

Too many fusions in too many nights, with way too little rest. His body was really busted up, and his mind was not much better. A dull, pounding headache occasionally erupted into splinters of razor-sharp pain. His brain felt taut and stretched thin to tearing point, and behind the fragile barrier of consciousness, his demons waited with eager hunger.

A light fusion could have healed his wounds in an instant, but he doubted that he could have hold on to his fragile control even over a relatively benign low-level light fusion.

If only he had some meds left. But the people he had been with had precious little to spare, and in any case he could not have asked without revealing what he had been doing during his frequent little jaunts into the bordering woods. The idea of stealing had been briefly considered, only to be promptly dropped and stomped to death. Only two years ago and he would have done it without too much twinge to his conscience. But then, two years ago he would not have any place to return to either. No one waiting for him to come back and celebrate his birthday with.

"Celebrating a birthday is when you tell someone you are glad he is born into this world."

Gods, that had to be the sappiest line he had ever heard. It was also the kindest thing anyone had ever said to him in a long time.

A high-pitch yipping drifted faintly to his ears, and Yuri stopped breathing, tilting his head towards the direction of the sound. Only the quiet susurration of the leaves broke the silence, but he had heard enough. He was familiar with the creature that made that sound, and it was no natural animal. A hunting call from one of the hell-hounds, akin to those he had left in pieces in the last killing ground. Still far off, but he knew how fast those damn things can move. He had five minutes, ten minutes tops, before the whole ravening pack would catch up to him.

It would seem that the choice had been taken from him. There was only one way left, if he wanted to stay alive.

Yuri forced himself forward with renewed urgency, clenching his teeth against the spiking pain, towards where he remembered passing a small cliff-face on his way in. It took five minutes, one of the longest five minutes of his life, before the looming shape of the cliff-face could be sighted from between the breaks in the foliage. Another two minutes, another fit of yipping much closer to where he was and getting closer, and he finally stumbled the last few meters down towards the cliff face. The stone face rose almost ten meters into the air, another eight to ten meters wide, making up one side of an outcrop too small to be called hill. The vertical surface was made of smooth, moss-covered stone, looking like all the world as if a giant had wielded an axe and hacked off a section of the earth.

Yuri stumbled the last few meters towards the cliff face and finally stop with his back supported by the cool stone.

Now his back was more or less protected. It was not ideal as they could still flank him, but it was the best he could do under the circumstances.

Much closer, now. He imagined he could hear the sound of their panting breaths as they ran, the faintly _wrong_ smell of their musk carried by the night wind.

Time's up.

Yuri took a deep, somewhat shaky breath. "Ok," he muttered to himself, "all right, you've been here before, lots of times. Still alive and kicking. No problem. Come on, Yuri, one more time. If a god can't kill you dead, no way you're gonna lose to this…"

He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, shutting out the rest of the world. He reached back inside him, and in his mind's eye the black breach at the furthest end of his consciousness shuddered and yawned open, tearing itself wider as he concentrated on it. Then he threw himself into the breach.

He did not dive in completely. The Graveyard of Souls was the last place he needed to be at this time. Instead, he held himself just at the edge and turned his attention towards the congregation of auras swirling just beyond the breach. He carefully ignored the two that shone the strongest and brightest. It was like trying to ignore the moon in favor of looking for a random star in a night sky. They pulled at him, a luminous disc that shone almost as bright as the sun and a lightless maw that sucked all aura into it and gave back none. In his current state, even expressing an interest would have doomed him, giving them the power to pull him into their orbit and swallow him whole.

He picked one mass, a white dwarf that was outshined by others, but nonetheless remained distinctive to him. It was one of the few that he actually found a sneaking fondness for, and he always felt that it never fought his fusion as much as it could have. Right now, in his weakened state, it was the only Fusion that he could trust.

_…Heaven's Fiend…_

The white dwarf flared into nova brilliance and engulfed him like a tidal wave. For a shivering, heart-stopping moment, he felt control slipped through his fingers like reins wrenched by the bucking of a horse, but once again, the Light fusion soul rewarded his faith in it and settled down around him, like a warm embrace, without demur.

The familiar tingling sensation of _change_ swept over him, goosebumps rushing over his skin even as they changed and hardened into tough, reinforced exoskeleton1. His back arched back in an impossible angle for a human spine and wings thrust out from below his shoulders, unfurling into their full five-meter wingspan. The tingling increased in intensity, almost like pain, to what he thought how being born must have felt like, and he opened his mouth to gasp in breath into a lung that expanded beyond what his should have been capable of. A keen squeezed itself out of narrowed oesophagus, and Heaven's Fiend/Yuri opened his eyes to a brighter, multi-faceted night sky.

He floated several hand-spans above the ground, but the light fusion was not capable of true flight, the reason why he had not simply flown away. The part of him that was purely human took a few seconds to sort out the dizzying view of a world through compound eyes. It was like a case of extreme fish-bowl vision, or fun-house mirror, where every straight line became curved and everything instantaneously swelled in size. The field of vision almost doubled, yet anything beyond several meters away blurred out of focus. On the other hand, colors were so much more vivid and alive, and the night sky shone with dustings of dark violet star clusters all but invisible to human eyes.

Experimentally, he reached out inside him for the mental strength to cast a healing spell. His exhausted mind moved sluggishly and he could barely scrape up enough strength to cast a weak healing spell. The cooling breeze of the healing spell bathed him and he could feel his natural healing process sped up a little. But all too soon, the quickening died down. There was simply no reserve left. Gaps in the fusion soul's white flesh showed here and there where it reflected the damage to his physical human body. Thankfully, fusion forms feel the hurt less, something that he did not understand but was not inclined to question further.

He threw off his disorientation with a full body shiver and settled down to wait for his enemies to find him. The hunters were about to find out that this prey had much bigger claws than them.

* * *


End file.
